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Phenom IIís havenít been manufactured for years... youíre really unlikely to find a brand new one. Even if you did, youíd pay quite a premium for a brand new, out of production chip. So, your best course of action, if you insist on a brand new chip, really will be to just go AM3+. And in the long run, that will actually cost you less than in trying to upgrade this system now, but then having to do it again in the next couple of years. If you go AM3+ now, you will buy yourself at least two more years of upgradability options with brand new chips, and again spend less over the long haul.

As to an AM3+ motherboard for your consideration, I very highly recommend the ASUS M5A99FX Pro R2.0, it is the best AM3+ board under $150 you can still buy and which has a sufficient VRM phase count to reliably handle the higher-end FX chips (8320 and better). Itís basically a Sabertooth without the brown motif and premium price. If you decide on the 8320 or better, I canít recommend a board with less than a 6+2 VRM (voltage issues can and most likely would result with a lesser VRM and one of those chips or better. Tons have reported that. Itís really not recommended, despite compatibility lists). And the VRM should also always be heatsinked (most under $100 are not and they are also almost always a 4+1 or 4+2 VRM. Again, really not sufficient for 8320 or better).

Unfortunately, changing the motherboard is almost guaranteed to break your OEM Windows license. You have about a 50-50 chance of Microsoft activating it again with the new board after you call them and explain why. If not, then youíll need to buy a System Builder 7 or 8.1 (around $100).

Now, if you really only use this system for gaming, you donít need an 8320 or better right now. You should go for a 6350 (give it a 212 Evo HSF), as most games presently canít utilize any more than 4 cores anyway (the sole exception are x64 games; few and far between). If, on the other hand, you do more than gaming, you will definitely see an overall better performance with an 8320 or better (but those chips really do demand a very good aftermarket HSF to keep them under 62C core temp {ďPackageĒ} Ė the $100 range kind of HSFs, and that donít fit into small cases either).

And just to give you an idea, I have never seen my 8350 go over 45% utilization (most of the time itís actually operating as a 4-core). That means I have plenty of headroom for a few years before I will have any need to upgrade. You should be more than fine even going with a 6350 is what Iím driving at. You probably wonít ever see one of them go beyond 70% utilization within the next couple years (you know, outside of stress testing or benchmarking).

What should I upgrade my CPU to, to make a difference gaming?

Does 64 bit Firefox make a differenceIve been using FF 32 bit for years now, and the usual complaints it gets have to do w/ memory leaks, Flash crashes, etc. Im just wonderin to anyone whos been using 64 bit FF and Flash- does it make a difference? Does using 64 bit mean more stability; does it solve the memory leaks; is it much...

Browsers & Mail

Will it make difference to make partition at beginning or end of HDD?Hi.
I have two hdds (500gb 7200rpm) in my laptop and have 260gb of data on the second one. I wanted to create a partition for games at the beggining of the 2nd drive (the left side) as i heard it increased performance to put games in anoher drive and at the beggining of the drive.
My question...

Performance & Maintenance

Core I7 did not make that much of a difference after allI have a Pentuum D Core 2 Duo desktop with 4G Ram ( 3G in use) running Win 7 32 bit. I needed to buy a new laptop so I got a Dell XPS 15Z 8G Ram core I7 with Win7 64 Bit.Both machines are running identical software. I thought I should notice a clear speed difference between both machines due to...

Hardware & Devices

How much of a difference between 8ms and 5ms when gaming on a LCD HDTVI'm going to be purchasing an LCD HDTV and I'm deciding between two identical TVs of the same brand. I will be gaming on it. One is a 42" with a 5ms response time and the other is a 39" with an 8ms response time. The thing is if I go with the 39", I save $50 and I am on a budget so is it worth the...

Gaming

How much difference would RAM make?Hi everyone,
This has been bugging me for years, and now, being a student my budget is tighter than ever so I have to chose my upgrades carefully!
My question is:
Currently I have 4GB DDR3 installed in my machine, without any games running I'm using about 1.5GB in Win7 ultimate x64. I like...